i started out the day before by contracting some phlegm inducing flu thing that had me blowing things out of my nose that hopefully i wouldn’t need to function as a human. seriously, i should have taken some pictures of this stuff…

and in packing my car, also the night before, i slashed open the tip of my left thumb… the cut is almost 3/4 of an inch long… it took 10 minutes for me to stop the bleeding. once i managed to clot, i applied some liquid bandage to my wound… which, if any of you know, feels like pouring a boiling mixture of vinegar and lemon juice on your eye. it’s essentially super glue. i think i may have invented some new profanity after the initial application. but more about thumbs in a bit.

7am saturday i hit the road to start my 5 hour pilgrimage to vermont. it was messy driving for the first 40 or so miles… then…

which was a nice pleasant, very bright surprise.

i got directions from google, as always… but the new directions were taking me a way that i had never gone before. things started looking unfamiliar to me. i had factored two hours into my trip to account for “stupid frank tricks” so i figured i was ok… my logic was that as long as i was going north, i’d eventually hit montpelier…if i hit canada then i’d know i went too far…

eventually, things started to look familiar. so i was cool. you know that when you see a wendy’s and a mcdonalds that civilization is still under your feet.

i arrived in front of the college at exactly 12:01pm… which took into account 2 gas station breaks and one bathroom break.

so i started to move my gear in for the week. of course, i brought many heavy things and of course i was placed on the third floor. no elevator. i thought that my heart was going to explode by the time i lugged my trunk full of things-i’ll-never-need-but-brought-just-in-case-of-nuclear-fallout up three flights of stairs.

i then proceeded to put my room together.

after that, i collapsed. ate half of a chicken parm sandwich i got from the franklin the night before, drank a coke zero and thanked the gods of wifi that i had internet in my room.

after a quick returning student orientation, i had a VERY LIGHT dinner (NECI was really off their game )then went to sign up for critiques.

after that, i went to see my gallery space and began hanging my semester’s work.

the piece is called”mary”. it’s a quick 45 page graphic novel type thing. actually, i goofed when i put the book together… i failed to include one page… not really story critical but it turned it into a 44 page thing. i feel really bad about that… but i know no one would have noticed if i had not just revealed the mistake.

and really, the ommission of that page makes the layouts better. so forget i said anything.

once the residency is over and i get back to the real world, i will make this story available online for free…i’ll post two pages a week… just to get you coming back for more!

so, each of those 44 pages are being held by 4 push pins. so do the math…176 push pins… that were “pushed” into this rather hard wall with… that’s right, you guessed it… my thumb! not with the ripped open thumb, but with the only healthy one i had left. by the time page 44 was in, i had a pea sized blister on my right thumb. mental note: next time, bring a hammer.

i then went back to my room, popped my blister and went to bed.